…but that was a long time ago, a long story everyone’s tired of repeating, or a short story simply not worth repeating again. - Caitlín R. Kiernan

I shouldn’t be this tired when I try to find my way back to the tree. I’ll rest for a while, and I’ll drift back down to the orchard, and the stone wall. I’ll lie in my bed and wait. Someone has turned the ponies out again.

Back home, the dank and mildewstinking halls of Quinlan Castle, and she pauses on the concrete front steps to shake the rain off Jerome's happy yellow umbrella, flaps it open and closed, open and closed, making a furious noise like the death throes of a giant bat or a pterodactyl, spraying a thousand droplets across the steps and the sidewalk.

"I think I might have something for you today," he says, reaches beneath the counter, and his hand comes back with a book, clothbound cover the color of antique ivory, title and author stamped in faded gold and art deco letters. Best Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood, and she lifts it carefully off the countertop, picks it up the way someone else might lift a diamond necklace or a sick kitten, and opens the book to the frontispiece and title page, black-and-white photo of the author in a dapper suit, sadkind eyes and his bow tie just a little crooked.